City opens books to online scrutiny with new Web site

Publication: Houston Chronicle

Matt Stiles
April 17, 2008

Asphalt streets, police cruisers, storm sewers - all obvious examples of how the city spends your tax money.

Then there are the obscure items - the toilet paper, mattresses and needles - among about $1.2 billion in supplies used to run the sprawling city government.

The city wants you to see it all.

This week, purchasing officials unveiled a new Web site that allows anyone to easily get detailed information about city contracts and one-time purchases.

Take toilet paper, for example. In a city with two major airports and 21,000 employees, it can be pricey: $1,405,397 over three years, to be exact. Now, anyone can get that figure with a few Internet clicks.

"The public needs to know where we're spending their money," said Calvin Wells, the city's chief purchasing official. "It's transparency."

The transparency can remind voters of the scale of their local government. The city plans to buy as many as 1,800 mattresses so firefighters can sleep during lulls in their 24-hour shifts. The needles stock immunization clinics and ambulances. Users also can find the unexpected, like $95 on citronella horse shampoo.

The online catalog is among several searchable features on the city's homepage, including restaurant inspections and campaign-finance records.

The digital disclosure follows a trend of governments using technology to open their books to Web visitors. Transparency advocates say that can save agencies money by automating requests for information from the public.

The Houston Independent School District posts an online "check register" that details more than $1 billion in supplies going back two years, for example, and the federal government uploads searchable details on some $17 trillion in contracts.

Ellen Miller, executive director of the Sunlight Foundation, a Washington, D.C.-based group that advocates for transparency, praised the city's new site.

"We do see popping up around the country examples where municipalities or individual elected officials are using the Internet in various ways to create better disclosure," she said. "Transparency on the Internet means that citizens can be engaged in a dialogue with officials in a way that improves democracy."

In Houston, taxpayers can see the big-ticket items City Council passes, such as the $125 million, three-year fuel deal with Motiva Enterprises LLC - the largest active contract. They can then see how much officials have spent from that contract.

The city's site details allotments for hundreds of items in broad categories: police ammo ($1,491,725), asphalt ($25,708,426) and veterinary supplies ($812,182).

Users can find gems by drilling down into the data - the $51,000 spent on prisoner identification wristbands since 2006; $1 million on overhead door repairs over 5 years; and the $814,000 spent to lease and maintain golf carts since 2003. And, in some cases, they can read the actual contract.

Mayor Bill White said this week that some of the fig- ures might surprise his constituents.

"The city's a big organization," he said.

But White, who has bragged about being "cheap," said he hoped the new site will not only increase transparency in city contracting, but also bring efficiencies by making it easier for departments to interact with their vendors. He also is taking challenges from other suppliers who think they can beat the competitors' prices.

"We want to be open and transparent," he said. "We hope that citizens will use their eyes and knowledge to help us spot places where we could save money."